I wanted to like this show and gave it my all. I love Shin Min Ah, I like Lee Sang Yi, I love contract relationship stories, but the story and execution of this show isn't good. This show, like a lot of bad k-dramas, goes crazy with slow-motion, slapstick, randomly devious characters, irresponsible uses of serious subject matter, wacky sound effects, and production decisions that amplify the goofiness of its characters and create a schizophrenic tone to the show. If you've watched a lot of k-drama, you know what I mean--it's the "try too hard to be interesting and funny" style of k-drama. I think with better creative minds at the helm of the structure and script, it would've been much better; the cast is pretty strong, but the executive choices are all the wrong ones.

No Gain, No Love follows Shin Min Ah's character who, very believably, is pissed about shilling out so much money over the years to passing acquaintances who were getting married. Her workplace discriminates against single women and so she decides she needs to get married in order to advance her career. She picks Kim Young Dae's character as her groom, who's a convenience store worker; they start out pseudo-enemies but he eventually agrees. A bit later, through some pretty contrived means, he starts working at her company and they have to manage the "realness" of their relationship. The B romance is a crazy mix of comical and serious, focusing on FL's foster sibling/adult fiction writer and FL's company CEO (Lee Sang Yi) who she sues for harassing her online (for one of the most ridiculous reasons I've ever seen).

I haven't seen anything else with Kim Young Dae, but I didn't care for his character here at all. I don't think he's given that much to work with; he's basically cast as "handsome guy ideal." All of the mystery and conflict of the story comes from him, but I didn't find him compelling at all. His character is responsible for all the slow-mo, fan-service, etc. that I find tacky in k-drama. It's not the actor's fault, but I can't help but think he's been typecast and this is the result. I also hate when a show always tells me a character is handsome; it makes me start thinking, "Is this guy really that hot? If he really was, why do they have to say it so much?" To give an example of what this show is working with, it goes full "glasses-make-you-ugly" followed by what he looks like without them, ending with an "oh no, he's hot!" I didn't like how it developed his character, even though I liked Shin Min Ah's career-oriented pragmatist character. They have decent chemistry (but definitely not as much as her and the guy from Hometown Cha-Cha), but what they do have, the last act pretty much kills.

Overall, just about every decision the show makes doesn't work for me. I can take and even enjoy a little bit of the classic k-drama silliness, but in this show, it's a crutch, as if it uses all the goofy editing and production tricks to pad time, which the show could've definitely used to flesh out what actually matter, i.e. the story itself. No show - not even an action romp - needs 10 instances of slow-mo an episode like this show. I also didn't find any of the extra stuff to be funny (besides maybe Lee Sang Yi's character). Not even Shin Min Ah can make up for all the weaknesses and lazy plotting temptations this drama gives in to. Disappointing.